There were three days last week when it didn’t rain all day (think about your syntax) — when  it rained, but not all day!  Otherwise there has been precipitation, all day, every day since the end of October.  That is why this blog has been so quiet of late — incessant moaning about the rain when you have chosen to live in a temperate rain forest would be tedious.

As wave after wave of weather drives down the valley smudging the view and the streams and rivers roar, it’s hard to get excited about the waterfalls when the lens of my camera is wet and the image fogged, is that just condensation or  camera-wobble due to shivering, anyway the shutter’s jammed — will it ever work again.

Last moment of respite from the deluge — in the Autumn.

There is a beauty, a vividness, in all this wetness, but lately it eludes me.

In the face of impending seasonal affective disorder we thought we’d have a little holiday, so off we set (not to somewhere warm and sunny) to Rossendale and Darwen in Lancashire — the home of the dark satanic mills of yore!

Darwen photographed by A F Buck in 1948 — note the air pollution!

We stayed in Hurst Green and mooched around Rossendale, to old haunts, now-derelict pubs of youthful exploit, new housing estates where cotton-mills and shoe factories had stood last time we visited. We were visiting the county archive, researching this rapidly disappearing industrial heartland and it’s characters, perhaps 10 years too late, but the archive was very helpful.  In the evenings we were cosy in the Shireburn Arms where the food was excellent and dawn in the  Ribble Valley was stunning.

We’re home now and guess what?  It’s raining!